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Dessert

Souffle Op Rice and Apples

A baked dessert of puff pastry edged dish filled with a rice and apple mixture, topped with beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Souffle Op Rice and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the rice in water until tender, then pound it finely.

  2. Mix the pounded rice with the egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Edge a baking dish with puff pastry and fill it with the rice mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. In the center, add apple marmalade, quince jam, and brandy.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then pour over the fruit mixture.

  3. Sift sugar on top and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Cinnamon + quincetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked and pounded to form the soft, thick body of the soufflé base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice mixture and add richness and set to the base.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the mixture and help it rise in the oven.
Apple marmalade
Adds fruit flavour and moisture to the centre of the dish.
Quince jam
Adds sweetness and a fragrant, tart fruit flavour to the centre.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until frothy. Whites must be whipped to a stable foam without over-beating or deflating. Air trapped in the foam is what makes the soufflé rise, so under-whipped or collapsed whites produce a flat result.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, apple, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, apple, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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